Beyond the Boundary – First Impressions

Boy meets girl. Girl is standing on the edge of a roof. Boy shouts at girl to get down. Girl has so much to live for. Girl jumps over the fence and back to safety. Girl stabs boy.

So begins Kyoukai no Kanata. The girl, Kuriyama Mirai, hunts youmu. The boy, Kanbara Akihito, is half-youmu. He also happens to love glasses (it’s what he shouts at Kuriyama so she doesn’t jump; Kuriyama sports a sweet pair of red glasses). Kuriyama is a huge klutz and definitely falls under the moeblob category—she trips often, has things fall on her head, and generally makes you want to scoop her up and protect her from anything harsher than a bubble. But she’s also pretty badass, able to utilize her blood as a sword, and fairly athletic, if her ability to jump over stairs is any indication.

The only problem is that, being from a clan hated for its powers for generations, she’s become unpracticed and unable to kill any actual youmu. Thankfully, Kanbara is immortal, so Kuriyama volunteers him for killing practice.

Kyoukai no Kanata is this season’s offering from KyoAni, based on a novel series. While it does hit a lot of their normal tropes—mainly Kuriyama and her endearing klutz personality—there’s a lot that seems to be going on in the background that is promising. The hint of feuds among different youmu-hunter families, the event in Kuriyama’s past that made her unable to fight youmu (despite her actual competence at it), and the possible importance of Kuriyama being the last of her clan could promise a very interesting season.

As always, the animation is smooth, and the music is fitting and nice; there are a few tracks I’d already like to have. The character designs are nothing much to write home about; they’re standard KyoAni fare, but the youmu designs could be interesting moving forward and show neat variation, lending themselves to some really gorgeous fight scenes.